I wish I had the ability to just set the status of a product to Discontinued. With stock or without stock.
If the product still has stock, then the In Stock language value changes to “Discontinued”.
When out of stock, the Out of Stock language value changes to “Discontinued”.
Instead of setting a product status to Hidden or Disabled, setting it to Discontinued allows my customers to still follow links to products that are Discontinued or obsolete, learn that the product is now Discontinued and maybe find recommendations for similar or newer products.
By simply hiding or disabling products, the customers now will ASK if the product is available. If the product was labelled as Discontinued, those questions would be answered already.
Leaving it as active and out of stock allows the customer to inquiry into when the product will be available again, Discontinued answers that question.
Hi Don,
/* Hack */
Product Details “avail since:” 01/01/3013 (or other date that we'll all be dead before)
Change the “available from” language variable to “Discontinued”
Problem solved?
Thanks JesseLee - I like the way you think! But that doesn't work for me as I use the Available Date for pre-orders on products.
What I would like from CS-Cart is a new status along with A=Active, H=Hidden, & D=Disabled. It's daunting to do this myself as the status of products is so integral to so many parts of the catalog.
Discontinued is a typical product status option you find in other inventory management software. It usually indicates that the product will no longer be carried by the store. It can usually have inventory and sell that inventory until it's gone.
Set Product Quantity to 0, then modify the language “Out of Stock” to “Out of Stock or Discontinued - Please Call” at least you get them to call so you can offer a substitution or try to help them so they don't go somewhere else.
Since it will probably never change back, why not just use 'hidden' and then add Discontinued to the start of the description or the product name. Think of it as part of the migration of the product (active → hidden → disabled → deleted). Hidden lets it be found by existing links but it won't show in searches or lists.
I've considered that T - but it should be able to be found in lists and searches.
Discontinued can have inventory and still be in stock. It's commonly combined with a Promotion at a product's “end of life”.
Once a product is set to Discontinued, it can no longer be placed on Purchase Orders (but can still have inventory).
The benefit to the consumer is that they can actually find the product in search results and see that it's been discontinued.
Discontinued probably isn't a product “status” - as CS-Cart defines it, as discontinued can be applied to an Active, Hidden or Disabled product, but it's not based upon inventory quantity either (like “in stock” or “out of stock” is)
BTW, I never delete products - it just hoses any reports on historical activity of those products. I have run products that were limited quantities and never coming back again - I set them to disabled once they are gone.
Hey Magpie,
Can you add 'discontinued' as a 'product feature'?
J.
Back in the early days, we used an ecommerce platform which catered for Discontinued products. Select the option for Discontinued and the product page would be updated with “Discontinued on XYZ”. This allowed us to show the new model, or something similar to the discontinued product.
I actually just finished setting something similar up for a CS-Cart user. Instead, I created a Global Option, with a single option: Discontinued. Set the 'Comment' for the option to “This item has now been discontinued”, set stock to 0 with 'do not allow add to cart' for no stock and then altered some templates to show/hide certain elements if stock is 0 and the option is active.
As Jesse says, a product feature. Or maybe more simply, just a category named “Discontinued Items - While stock lasts”.
I guess it all depends on what you want discontinued to mean to your customers. Usually the seller wants to close-out the item and get rid of all stock on hand. Hence it usually has a discount. So you could just apply a promotion to items in the Discontinued category.
StellarBytes, the Global Option with a DISCONTINUED variant is the closest thing I have found to what I am trying to achieve. Thank you.
Adding an option that states DISCONTINUED places the language directly under the inventory status so I don't really have to modify any templates. What type of option did you select for this? I thought radio button looked the least peculiar.
Two things that are bad about this method:
- The “Back in Stock Notification” is still displayed on the page for the product - which might confuse customers.
- The product shows up in lists and search results with no indication that it is discontinued, in fact it has that annoying “select options” link. My install of v3 has no “list with options” list layout template - even if I wanted to use it. This is a deal killer for me.
T, I considered a category. Instead of a Discontinued category though, I would just like to add the Discontinued items (that still have stock) into a “Clearance” or “Sale” category - for quick selection.